Do you hold a cosmetic scope open for the first week or lock it before closing

Question

I've been building my scope sheets off walkthrough video and photos, and I'm now arguing with myself about when the sheet becomes final. Two approaches I've watched people use.

Lock it at contract. Every line item priced, materials ordered to arrive on day two, contractor paid against a fixed sheet, no changes without written approval and a price. Timeline is the shortest possible and you know your number before you own the house.

Or hold it open for the first five to seven days. You get in, pull carpet, look at what's actually under it, run every faucet, then finalize. You lose a week of carrying cost and your materials arrive later, but you don't order 2,400 of LVP for a floor that turned out to be sound hardwood, and you don't paint a ceiling you're about to open for a leak.

The compression argument cuts both ways for me. Margins are thin enough that a week of holding costs matters, and thin enough that one wrong 2,400 order matters too. Locking early also gives contractors a cleaner bid, which usually means a lower bid. Holding open means the first week's crew is doing demo on an unpriced scope, which is where I've seen hourly work turn into a bad habit.

samantha_ruiz · Answer

Third option, and it's the one that got me past the ceiling I was hitting. Lock the sheet at contract but write a discovery line into it, mine is usually 8 to 10 percent of hard cost, and it can only be spent on things found in the first week. Materials for the certain items ship on schedule. The uncertain items, flooring being the big one, get ordered on day three after demo.

What killed me on my second deal was ordering flooring for the whole house off a photo of one bedroom. Two rooms had subfloor damage that needed replacing, which is not cosmetic work, and I was standing there with pallets I couldn't install. Now I split my orders. Paint, hardware, lights, fixtures all go early because they're never wrong. Flooring and counters wait for a measurement taken after demo.

On the bid point, ember, contractors don't actually bid lower on a locked sheet. They bid lower on a clear sheet. A sheet with a named contingency line and a written change process is clearer than a sheet that pretends nothing will be found.

joe_delgado5 · Answer

I lock everything and I eat the mistakes, because on my deals the week costs more than the mistakes do. My average hold is 51 days and interest plus taxes plus utilities runs me around 190 a day, so a discovery week is 1,300 gone before anyone lifts a brush. I'd rather write off a wrong flooring order twice a year.

But that only works because I walk the house twice before I sign and I pull a corner of carpet in every room with the seller's permission. If you can't get in twice, you're not locking a scope, you're guessing at one, and keystone's contingency line just says that out loud. The part I'd argue with is the low bid instinct. A contractor who bids a fixed sheet cheap in this market is either busy elsewhere or planning to find something. Check what his change order rate is before you decide the fixed bid saved you anything.

Do you hold a cosmetic scope open for the first week or lock it before closing

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